The Mentoring Play in Four Acts
Whether a successful mentor-mentee relationship happens between employees in the workplace or out in the community with troubled teens, it unfolds and develops in four acts. Act I is about getting acquainted. Act II is devoted to goal setting. Act III is seeing these goals through and meeting expectations. Act IV marks the closure of the mentor-mentee relationship.
Act I: Getting Acquainted
So much hullabaloo is made about the importance of first impressions in life. Some people swear that first impressions tell them all they need to know about another person. Others say that getting to know someone gradually over time is the only way to really get to know a person. There's merit in both opinions. First impressions can make or break a relationship on the spot and in real time. Nowhere is this truer than in a mentoring relationship. This is precisely why it's vital that you move slowly at first.
Mentoring doesn't work as a crash course. Early on in mentor-mentee relationships is not the time to come on strong. The infancy of the relationship is when you informally acquaint yourself with your mentee. It's the time to put your mentee at ease.
The initial meeting between you and your mentee may be somewhat awkward. Getting to know someone usually is. Don't leap to hasty conclusions. Don't allow any negative first impressions to cloud your hopes for a brighter future. “How am I ever going to work with this punk?” “I don't see how I'll ever get through to a kid with such an attitude!” Hold on! Nobody ever said that mentoring was an easy job. It's not. It requires patience and sincere commitment. And, yes, in Act I of the mentor-mentee relationship, both patience and commitment are sometimes sorely tested.
Use your first few mentoring get-togethers to establish a bond of trust. And there's only one way to do this: Get to know your mentee as an individual. Explore the personality and interests of your mentee while withholding any value judgments. Similarly, your mentee's got to get to know you. Two people getting to know one another gradually over time is the surest route to establishing rapport. And rapport equals straightforward communication, which is essential in all successful mentoring relationships.
When setting career goals with your mentee, make sure they're your mentee's goals and not yours. Respect your mentee's interests and hopes about the future even though they may be very different from the paths that you would venture down.
In Act I of the mentor-mentee relationship, you must come to understand and appreciate your mentee's personality and temperament, and then determine the approach you're going to take to get the best out of him or her over time. For instance, you may be a person who talks about your personal feelings at the drop of a hat. Don't, however, assume that everybody else does the same thing. Don't assume that your mentee shares your penchant for getting in touch with “good stuff.” The surest way to scare off mentees is to put them on the spot right away by asking them a barrage of therapist-style questions. Take it slowly — evolve.
Pay special heed to the reasons behind the goals you set in your mentor-mentee relationship. Make sure that the mentee really and truly wants to reach the goals and that they are not what he or she thinks you or a member of his or her family wants.
Earlier in the book this subject was touched on in a discussion about your role as a coach and how it was not the same as a therapist's. Similarly, your role as a mentor does not ask you to be your mentee's therapist. You're not a cable talk show host either. That is, you're not looking for a scoop in uncovering something juicy in your mentee's personal life. You're a mentor trying to help another human being be a better and more productive individual. The bottom line is, when you bond with your mentee, you'll know how he or she feels about so many different things soon enough.
Make it your purpose in life to get to know your mentee slowly but surely. Then, when you emerge from your initial mentoring meetings, you'll have achieved all of your short-term objectives. Now, move with confidence into Act II of your relationship.
Act II: Setting Goals
Once you've cemented your mentor-mentee relationship in the get-to-know-one-another phase of Act I, it's time to advance to the goals stage. If, as the discovery process evolves, the mentor-mentee relationship is on solid ground, so too will the future expectations be on solid ground.
During Act II of the mentoring relationship both you and your mentee should discuss expectations. Work closely together in establishing real, measurable expectations — goals — that both of you have for the relationship. Keep the goals feasible and razor-sharp. Put them in writing if you have to. Encourage your mentee to verbalize the expectations that he or she has for you as a mentor beyond any high-sounding abstractions as “making a positive difference” and “providing direction.” Make Act II in your mentor-mentee relationship the beginning of an intimate and productive journey. That is, trust one another and commit to seeing the relationship through to genuine results — expectations realized and goals met.
Always come prepared in your scheduled meetings with your mentees. Keep your get-togethers focused and meaningful. Know where you're headed at all times. Don't fill in the time with fluff. In fact, it's better to come overprepared than underprepared. By taking this mapped out route, you'll stave off any boredom on your mentee's part.
Act III: Meeting Goals and Expectations
In Act III, after you've set goals and established the level of expectations that you have for your mentee and that your mentee has for you, it's time to perform — to do. It's in this phase of mentoring where you can take more liberties with your mentee, without the risk of souring or ending the relationship. It's now when you must start taking your mentee to task, if necessary, for not living up to promises, upholding your standards, and strictly abiding by your mutually agreed-upon rules for the relationship.
Throughout history there have been countless mentor-mentee relationships in every conceivable discipline. From philosophy to politics to psychiatry to the arts, mentoring has always played an important role. Socrates mentored Plato. Hubert Humphrey mentored Walter Mondale. Sigmund Freud mentored C. G. Jung. Ralph Waldo Emerson mentored Henry David Thoreau.
Act III is the results-oriented phase of mentoring. It's at once a time of great acceptance between you and your mentee, and a time of change. And in successful mentor-mentee relationships, we're talking about positive changes and growth as human beings. You might, for example, have extracted a goal from your mentee to do better in school during the current semester. Within the goal are expectations of better study habits and preparation for exams. Thus, you ask and expect that your mentee practice self-discipline in making the necessary changes in his or her life to accommodate the added study and overall commitment to schoolwork.
In this example, the Day of Reckoning comes with the report card. This is the ultimate measure of success. But along the way, you've got homework and exams to look over, as well as other indicators to measure your mentee's progress in reaching his or her goal. Like a coach and an employee's performance plan, you are expected to keep tabs on your mentee's performance at all times.
You don't set goals together and be done with it. You don't say you want to see better grades in school and not remain focused on the road to the report card. Just as in the workplace, you cannot afford to wait until the deed is done to commence the first checkup. There need to be many checkups en route. And with periodic checkups come many opportunities to offer counsel in making corrections and overcoming obstacles. It's also the place to provide good, old-fashioned encouragement.
The ending of a mentor-mentee relationship often engenders an abandonment issue in a mentee. This is why you must celebrate the ending of the formal relationship as a beginning — a beginning of many successes to come.
Act IV: Concluding the Relationship
This is the final act in the mentor-mentee relationship. You've traveled the normal mentor-mentee path and navigated around its many potholes and slowed at its various speed bumps. First, you spent quality time getting to know one another, moving cautiously with both an open mind and an open heart. Once you bonded as a mentor-mentee pair who trusted and respected one another, you were able to sit down and discuss goals for the future and what each one of you wanted to get out of the relationship. With goals in place, you assisted your mentee in realizing them. You were there the whole time to poke and prod, to chastise when required, and to celebrate progress and legitimate achievements together.
Is your mentee supposed to mentor you too?
Not quite. Nevertheless, your mentee will teach you many lessons about yourself and your abilities. Courtesy of your mentee, you'll discover your aptitude for teaching, gain patience, and better understand and appreciate human nature in its infinite diversity.
The last act in a mentoring relationship is the moment you put it to bed. A mentor-mentee relationship is not meant to be a lifetime proposition. It's meant to help people help themselves. Ending the mentor-mentee relationship doesn't mean you end any contact between you and your mentee. It merely means that you've done all that you can, and your mentee has positively responded and is ready to move forward on his or her own without your mentoring hand. It's up to you, in concert with your mentee, to determine the new nature of your relationship. Remaining friends is a popular next step for a mentor and mentee who have shared real successes and growth.
The reason mentor-mentee relationships are finite is the same reason kids are expected to leave the parental nest when they become adults. Ideally, they've been taught many lessons, experienced ups and downs, and are ready to go it alone. You want to give your mentee a pair of functioning wings to fly away without your assistance.
